The polio vaccine researched by a scientist is a miracle worth writing about. In September 2019, among the 42 meritorious and exemplary figures commended by the state, he was awarded the honorary title of "People's Scientist" as a diligent climber of scientific peaks. He is the little-known scientist Gu Fangzhou.
A disease that threatens mankind has been eliminated, but the hero of the disease is little known, and we have the responsibility to tell the story of the "father of Chinese sugar pills" to everyone, and spread the revolutionary spirit of the "people's scientists" who have done their best and died after their own death!
01 Ordered to study vaccines.
Regarding the "sugar pill", which was eaten by people born before about 1980, it is a sugar-coated oral pill and a vaccine to prevent polio. Before the sugar pills, many children were disabled by polio, and during the years, this childhood disease was rampant, which frightened families with children. There are still some elderly people who are disabled because of polio at that time.
The person who made "polio" disappear is "Gu Fangzhou". Born in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province in 1926, he graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Peking University School of Medicine in 1950, studied Xi virology at the Graduate School of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in 1951, and received his Ph.D. in virology in 1955. After returning to China, he worked at Peking Union Medical College, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. In 1957, at the age of 31, Gu Fangzhou was ordered to begin research on polio.
As soon as Gu Fangzhou returned to China, he was faced with a polio outbreak in various parts of China, and the situation was very serious, and he accepted the task of studying the disease resistance. Gu Fangzhou took seven people to Yushan Mountain in the western suburbs of Kunming, Yunnan Province (where there is an ape experimental base), and they started from scratch, built dormitories, built laboratories, and built cell constant temperature roomsThere was no ice storehouse, so they carried the vaccine to the meat factory at the bottom of the mountain to refrigerate, and sometimes the vaccine had to be carried on and off the back more than a dozen times.
02 Participate in the vaccine trial as a family.
These exertions are not terrible, the most terrible thing is hunger. In 1960, when he caught up with a natural disaster, he could only eat a few taels of food a day, and he could not stop doing heavy physical work and high-intensity mental work for a day. Once, a keeper in the ape laboratory was found stealing monkey food, Gu Fangzhou felt very bitter, people were so hungry that they went to steal monkey rations. He told the keepers: "People can go hungry, but monkeys can't go hungry, and they have to be experimented."
At the end of 1959, the first live attenuated vaccines were produced. It has been proven to be safe and effective in monkeys after clinical trials. But can it be used on people?You need to use people to do clinical trials. At the risk of possible paralysis, Gu Fangzhou received the support of his wife and drank the first batch of vaccine solutions with his colleagues. A week later, Gu Fangzhou and his colleagues had stable vital signs and did not show any abnormalities.
The vaccine solution is not safe enough for monkeys and **. Victims of polio are mainly children, and they have to be safe and effective for children. Next, Gu Fangzhou said in his heart: "Son, this is a contribution to the tens of millions of children of the motherland!."Then while his wife was not paying attention, he quietly fed the vaccine to his 1-year-old son. However, he was still discovered by his wife Li Yiguan, Li Yiguan's heart tightened, and asked her husband, Gu Fangzhou admitted her decision with difficulty.
03 Successful vaccine and stubborn disease disappears.
In order to save other people's children, Gu Fangzhou sacrificed his own children and used his son to test "poison" from his wife, which made Li Yiguan fall into a contradiction, she understood the significance of this decision to the children and medical research, and tried her best to comfort her husband, but she was full of anxiety and uneasiness, worried about the possible consequences of her son. After several days of waiting and observation, the son's physical indicators were normal, and the couple finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Gu Fangzhou's approach shocked other researchers, and they took the vaccine home one after another, using their own children to start the vaccine trial. Fortunately, there were no irreversible results, there was no rejection in the children, and the development of the vaccine was successful. Finally the vaccine can be mass-produced, and his wife Li Yiguan proposed to make the vaccine into sugar pills for children to take and preserve, and this suggestion was adopted.
The next 5 million doses of the vaccine will be distributed and tested on a larger scale. Clinical comparisons have shown that live vaccines are not only safe, but also significantly reduce morbidity. In 1965, "sugar pills" were promoted throughout the country, and the staff of epidemic prevention stations around the country used open thermos flasks for popsicles to fill "sugar pills" and delivered them to children one by one, saving countless children from the threat of disability and death. Their vaccines have become the patron saints of children and have made a great journey for public health.
04 People's Scientist deserved.
Mr. Gu Fangzhou devoted his whole life to the cause of polio eradication and vaccine development, allowing himself and his own son to test the "virus", saving three generations of Chinese, and finally achieving comprehensive polio eradication and polio-free status for China for a long time, benefiting hundreds of millions of children, and is known as the "father of China's polio vaccine".
Mr. Gu Fangzhou has been engaged in the research of live attenuated polio vaccine all his life, established the isolation and finalization method of "polio" virus, and formulated the trial production and safety standards of "polio" live vaccine. He guided the production and identification of billions of vaccines in China for more than 20 years, and made outstanding historical contributions to the development of China's public health.
In recognition of his contributions, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London) in 1987, a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters in 1989, and a Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences in 1992. Medical scientist, virology expert, former president and first-class professor of Peking Union Medical College, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. On September 17, 2019, the state awarded him the honorary title of "People's Scientist".
On January 2, 2019, Mr. Gu Fangzhou passed away in Beijing at the age of 92. Although Mr. Gu Fangzhou was not an "academician" in China in his lifetime, his contribution was far greater than that of those "academicians" who were indiscriminate. We finally understand why Mr. Gu Fangzhou was selected as the "People's Scientist".